African-American Project is now called US Black Heritage Project

Question

Hello all! I want to announce that after several weeks of discussion, the African-American Project has chosen to rename itself as US Black Heritage Project. You can read some of the reasons for this change here:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:US_Black_Heritage:_Our_Project%27s_Name

Please note: The new official project tag is black_heritage, however we will still be using the african_american tag for now for transition's sake. 

If you were following the african-american tag (hyphen) this has been changed to african_american (underscore) to standardize it like other tags.

For now, the sticker is the same {{African-American Sticker}}

Exciting things are happening in this project and we will be announcing some of them soon. Thanks!

Comments

Is it OK to include wills that have been found on Ancestry or other genealogy sites on the profiles of slave owners?  I did call Ancestry a few weeks ago to ask about this and was told any documents found on their site fall under their copyright law. I see some of the original wills on slaveowners' profiles as pdf documents.To get around this issue, I transcribed the wills I found and put the transcription on the profile. This is a tedious process however and I just wanted to know if there is a workaround or if posting the original document is OK Under certain circumstances.

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That is a good question, Jean. Unfortunately, any documents we get from Ancestry we shouldn't be posting here. Can you find the same document at Family Search and link to there? Otherwise we're stuck transcribing them. Some people have copied of wills they have in their possession or they have taken photos of. These can be posted.

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That seems like gross overreach by Ancestry.  A will is a public document and not subject to copyright.  Ancestry can't just copyright something it does not own because someone posted it there.  Next they'll be telling us they've copyrighted census data!  I've posted some of my information on Ancestry:  I dare them to tell me that they now own it!

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Hi Jack, whoever takes the photo has the copyright to that photo. If I took the photo of the will myself, I own the copyright of that photo. It's not the will itself that's in question.

Ancestry contracts with other places as well that takes the photos and the copyright extends from those other organizations through that contract. I'm not talking about photos uploaded by members. Whoever owns or took the photo owns the photo copyright.

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I believe it isn't a copyright question in the US. A non-transformative reproduction of an out of copyright item remains out of copyright in the US. However, I think Ancestry's terms of use for their data indicate you cannot reproduce materials. It is the same end result, but for a different reason.

I think there are ways to share a link from ancestry to non-subscribers, but I am unsure of that syntax.

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I'm sorry, I didn't realize we were discussing photographs of wills.  Yes, when you take a photograph, you own the photograph.  If I take a photograph of your house, I own the photograph -- I don't, however, own your house!  I personally only very rarely upload a photograph to WikiTree, and certainly not photographs of documents.  I want the contents of the document in the text with a full appropriate citation as to what it is and where it came from.  I realize now that the earlier question was about avoiding doing a transcription -- and it's really the transription which is useful because that it what makes the information accessible.

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W, here are the two link templates you can use for Ancestry, but you have to learn which number is the right one in the URL to use. You just have to play with it until you have it figured out and then it's easy after that.

{{Ancestry Record|1234|5678}}

{{Ancestry Image|1234|5678}}

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Thank you! I was about to go looking for that for my family member's will listing enslaved people.

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The numbers can be found by hovering over the "Hint" link in Ancestry. The first set is the #s after db= and the second, after h=

If you have a subscription you can double-check. Somewhere in WikiTree Help one can find Ancetry link instructions, but I always find that process of making a successful search a random bear.

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The most "fair use," of a photographed will "owned" by Ancestry might be creating an abstract of the will. A full transcription would run the risk of being deemed an outright reproduction, unless the cursive is arguably deemed difficult to transcribe.

Answer 1

Will we still use the African-American Sticker as is?

Comments

Yes, it will be the same sticker for now until we discuss any changes to it. We're still talking about which image to change to. Great question!